As the nation once again observes Veterans Day, I think of two veterans: one I know very well through a 58-year acquaintance and the other from a conversation that lasted but 30 minutes.

The two veterans met as they were undergoing the rigors of dialysis at Queen of the Valley Medical Center. The two soon became friends and it was apparent that they shared a common heritage of service in the United States Navy.

The first veteran enlisted in March of 1945 at age 17, as soon as he was of age. He traveled all the way from Napa to San Diego for boot camp, and after graduating was transferred all the way back to Mare Island for duty as a corpsman. Through the years, he joked that the furthest he ever got from home during the war was that stint at boot camp.

In more serious moments, he mentioned how glad he was that the war ended quickly with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Apparently, his class of corpsman was briefed that the home invasion of Japan would probably render the life expectancy of a corpsman to be 15 minutes. Knowing how tough this veteran is, I would suspect that he would have doubled or tripled that estimate.

As a bit of trivia, the armed services ordered 400,000 purple heart medals in preparation for that invasion. That stock is still being issued to this day.

 After an honorable discharge from the Navy as a Pharmacist’s Mate 3rd class, he graduated from UC Berkeley in 1950 and earned his M.D. from UC San Francisco Medical School in 1954. He began naval service once again as a reservist in the medical corps. Through the years, he saw duty on destroyers, aircraft carriers and as a Marine Corps battalion surgeon. His last reserve tour was in 1979, aboard the USS Independence in the Mediterranean, more than 34 years after his first enlistment.

He moved his family back to his hometown of Napa in 1961 and opened his civilian practice after 15 years of college, medical school, internship, residency and chief residency. His specialty was thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, but he also was involved deeply with trauma surgery. As California law stipulates that a doctor may no longer be designated the primary surgeon after age 65, he became an accomplished and sought-after second. It was only after he reached his 81st birthday that he canceled his malpractice insurance and finally retired. His other activities included membership in the Federation American College of Surgeons, serving as president of Pacific Coast Surgical Society and as a past member of California Board of Medical Examiners Review. He continues to undergo dialysis for prostate cancer.

Anchors aweigh

The second veteran, the one I met for the first and only time at the dialysis center, was very soft-spoken. But his words were distinct and crisp and he recounted his naval service with great pride. He was commissioned in February of 1941 from the U.S. Naval Academy. The February date was four months earlier than the usual June commencement date as the nation was already on a war footing. This was FDR’s so-called “Phony War.”

He saw destroyer convoy duty in the North Atlantic until December of 1941 when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his destroyer was sent to the Pacific Ocean. As he recounted his World War II combat experience on destroyers in the Pacific theater, I was wide-eyed with awe.

He told of the Battle of Coral Sea and taking on survivors of the carrier Lexington, then racing north to participate in the battle of Midway and again rescuing survivors of the carrier Yorktown, then racing back to Guadalcanal for operations on the gun line during the day and the evacuation of wounded Marines from the shore at night for further transfer to hospital ships. He spoke of participating in several major battles in the Pacific, battles with names — Pelelieu, Tarawa and Okinawa among them — that are firmly etched in the minds of every sailor since then. He recalled the raising of the flag on Mt. Suribachi and the cheer that went up from the crew. He told me of his destroyer taking up lifeguard station astern of the carriers and rescuing downed pilots. He chuckled with a twinkle in his blue eyes as he said, “The fee for returning an aviator to the carrier was 20 gallons of ice cream.”

Destroyers did not have ice-cream-making capability but the carriers did, and they always paid in full. He said they received “hundreds of gallons of ice cream” Think about that for a moment.

The battle of Okinawa was hard, even for this combat veteran. The Japanese attack was unrelenting and merciless and a precursor of what could be expected from an invasion of the home islands.

 “A kamikaze hit us amidships, right on the quintuple torpedo tube mount. Our damage control team moved in right away but the heat of the fire cooked off one of the torpedo warheads ..…it wasn’t pleasant to see my shipmates’ remains scattered all over the ship. That hit took us out of the war.”

He told me of his love of ship handling and the later command of his heavy cruiser. Moving from sea duty to work on the staff of the Atomic Energy Commission, he told of a speech he wrote for President Eisenhower and how it was printed on the front page of the New York Times. With a matter-of-fact demeanor, he spoke of briefing President Kennedy on his nuclear strike options during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Think about that for a moment, as well.

Perhaps these stories mean more to me than others, as the first veteran is my father, Dwight H. Murray, Jr.

The second veteran, Capt. Charles Nelson, and I share the United States Naval Academy as our alma mater, he ’41 and me ’73, and all the naval traditions that go with it. The more important lesson, however, is their devoted service to our Navy and nation and that their courageous efforts and hundreds of thousands like them (I think of Jim Maggetti and the late Judge Thomas Kongsgaard, both long time Napa residents) preserved our nation for at least two more generations. They leave a rich legacy and one well worth admiring, respecting, emulating and remembering.

Postscript

It was with great sadness that I learned from my mother, Jeanne Murray, of Capt. Nelson’s passing on Oct. 24. I had but that one brief conversation with him on Aug. 29. Captain Nelson. Thank you for the privilege of knowing you. I salute you. Anchors aweigh.

A note about the author

Mike Murray graduated from Napa High School in June 1969, and two weeks later was at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. He graduated from the Naval Academy in June 1973 and later became a helicopter pilot who served in the 6th fleet in the Mediterranean. He and his father both came across the Atlantic on the USS Independence in 1979, at the end of one of Cmdr. Michael Murray’s sea tours. Cmdr. Murray retired in 1995, having earned three Navy Air Medals.

His grandfather, Dwight Murray, Sr., was born in Indiana in 1888 and was commissioned into the Navy medical corps in 1917, two months before his scheduled graduation from medical school. He went over with the first American Expeditionary Force in October, and his duties were split between the U.S. Marine Corps and the destroyer patrol service in the English Channel. In France, he cared for German prisoners so capably and compassionately that prisoners made him gifts out of scrap brass and their own brass buttons from their uniforms. The gifts are inscribed “To Dr. Dwight Murray from German Prisoners” and are still in the possession of the Murray family. Years later, he served as assistant to the chief of medicine at Mare Island Naval Hospital in Vallejo. He retired in 1922 and moved to Napa where he opened his medical practice and helped run one of Napa’s first hospitals.